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Next Stop - Texas!

After
we left San Antonio, we moved onto our next home, also in Texas. It was
a bittersweet move as the three children and I moved into temporary living
quarters on base at Laughlin AFB, and Todd had to stay behind in San Antonio
to complete his training. When we arrived in San Antonio we had come here
to try and find a home to buy but as there weren't any that 'took our
fancy', we decided to build instead.

The whole
process was made so much easier by our real estate agent/builder - Don
Ellis. What a truly wonderful man he is. He had the patience to answer
all of my questions throughout the building process, and even after we
had moved into our new house (which was a VERY long and drawn out process
because of the military) he was there at the drop of a hat with all of
the answers!!
It was an amazing process seeing it built from scratch. Getting to choose
everything from the taps to the colours! And every step of the way Don
was patient and very informative ... and helpful!

Here
are some photos of our new home from the beginning to the just-about-finished.
We still have to get the landscaping done and that will have to wait just
a bit longer. It's wonderful to be in our new home though - the children
are so much more settled. Timothy is enjoying his new school which is
within walking distance away!

I still
find it hard to believe that I can see a mexican city from my bedroom
window ... in Montana we were 2 hours from Canada, now we're 10 minutes
from Mexico!!

This is the bare section that was purchased for our house to be built
on.

This is the now-not-so-bare-section. With the initial stages of the foundation
having been laid. It was an exciting time - but we were still in San Antonio
at this stage, so we didn't get to see much of it happening.

A friend of ours who lives just up the road took this photo for us so
that we could see how the building was progressing. Since the last time
we had seen it was the previous photo, it looked like it was coming along
rather well!

By the time that the children and I had moved here to live, this was where
the building 'was at'. It was really exciting coming in and seeing everything
that was happening. Every day would bring fresh changes - and challenges!

Todd made it over every now and then to take a look
at the progress. The other way he kept up was with the photos I would
email him on a regular basis. Here they've put the 'black paper stuff'
(note my usage of technical jargon) on the exterior and were just about
to lay the concrete.

This is the same part of the interior as the photo above - except it now
has walls so you can see the definition starting to show! Thank goodness
I didn't feel the need to come in and clean up after the workers had been
here every day!

Okay - so here the black stuff was being covered with the 'adobe' stuff.
And the concrete had been laid. At least we'll be able to drive the cars
into the garage now!

Same spot for the interior shot - only now we've got a bit of colour on
the walls, light and electrical sockets and what I call 'kickboards' -
comes from all of those years frequenting pubs and bars I suppose!

I just happened to be there when the first of the tiles were being laid
... I was really starting to get excited about moving in at this point.
However, that wasn't to be so straight forward as we thought initially.
Nevertheless, seeing the tiles go down was another exciting time in the
building of our first brand-new home together!

And the tiles are down ... the photo is taken looking
from the living room (back wall of home) into the kitchen (on left) and
the living room-entrance (on right)

My kitchen being put together! On the original floor plan the kitchen
was a lot smaller, so we asked if the kitchen could be expanded. Of course
Don being the wonderfully helpful man that he was, did it without complaint
and a smile on his face. It ended up being an extra 100 sq ft in the end
... and I only JUST have enough space for all of my kitchen crap!!

The outside - with the colours we chose. We didn't realise the main colour
was going to be quite so ... white ... but it doesn't look too bad!

The finished product - from the same spot the other interior shots were
taken. This was about three weeks after we moved in so there was still
things to be moved and found places for, but we were so very happy to
be in our new home finally! It had been six months from when we moved
from Maryland to when we moved into our new home so it was lovely to see
all of our furniture and belongings again!

And this is the living room - dining - kitchen in the background ... complete
with kid's toys that they were delighted to have around them again!